Shadowing Practice: Always Angry? Try This Technique Before The Next Blow Up - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Are you always angry with blowups or stewing about something?
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There's probably some hidden hurts stirring it up.
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I'm going to show you how to analyze your anger.
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I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist, and I make mental health education videos.
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Our emotions are the way we express ourselves and affect how we feel about ourselves, the decisions that we make, what we believe about the world, and how we interact with others.
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Renowned psychologist, Dr. Paul Ekman, identified six basic emotions that we all have.
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Fear, surprise, happiness, sadness, disgust, and anger.
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From this group of emotions, the most destructive to relationships is anger.
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Yet, it's a normal emotion that we all have.
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How you express your anger has a lot to do with your personality and your upbringing.
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If feeling angry makes you feel vulnerable and exposed, you may suppress your anger and not express it because you fear losing control.
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Suppressed anger is a form of avoidance and can lead to anxiety and feelings of depression.
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On the other hand, some people don't filter their anger at all, and as soon as something triggers them, they express their anger with aggression, either yelling or sharp words or actions.
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And action may be as simple as deleting you from my contacts or blocking your messages because you say things that make me angry or hurt my feelings.
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I could insult you back, but because that's not my personality, I wouldn't know what to say.
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So rather than invite an argument with you, which I'll probably lose and make me feel worse, I just delete you.
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Sometimes, the immediate expression of anger is a good thing and allows you to purge the negative feelings and move on.
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But it can be a bad thing when your response is too aggressive, like blowing up at people or having a reaction that's out of proportion to the trigger, like feeling heat in your chest from anger when someone interrupts you too many times, and the person doesn't even realize how much their interruptions bother you.
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Another sign of pathological anger is chronic anger when you're always angry or annoyed about something.
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So anger can be adaptive if it helps you prune away negative situations or experiences like the example of deleting people who upset you, or it can be maladaptive when the expression of it does more harm than good.
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When dealing with maladaptive anger, it's helpful to look at what lies underneath the anger.
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And one way to examine your anger is to think of it as an iceberg that has a visible part above the surface of the water, but then a much larger part lying beneath the surface that you can't see.
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The visible part is the situation that triggers your angry response.
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In the middle, just below the surface, is your hurt feelings and unmet needs.
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Then at the deepest layer is fear.
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Let's look at an example of how to analyze this together.
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Think of a situation that triggered your anger and caused you to blow up at someone in a way that seemed excessive, or maybe you didn't blow up, but you felt very angry as if someone poked a sore spot on you and now you're aggravated, distracted, and just in an overall bad headspace.
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Here's a hypothetical example.
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My sister Jane asked to borrow $500 from me to start a new business.
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She quit her job because the company no longer allows her to work from home, and she didn't want to have to drive to an office anymore and wants to be her own boss.
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I know Jane, and I know that although she was being paid for an eight-hour day, she probably only worked a couple of hours each day.
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She doesn't have a whole lot of ambition, and I can't see her making enough money to replace her old job.
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When I tell her this, she says...
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- Why can't you just be on my side this one time?
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- implying that I don't trust her, which I don't.
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So, to be supportive, I give her the money.
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Months passed and I don't really get many details about how Jane's new business is going.
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Whenever I ask, she just says, "Oh, it's fine." We get together at a family dinner and my mom asked Jane how she likes her new job.
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I say, "You mean her new business, right?" Jane, matter-of-factly says...
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- Oh no, that didn't work out.
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I had to get a real job.
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- I then asked about my $500 and she says...
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- Oh, sorry, that went into the business, and I had to close it down.
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- I asked, "When were you going to let me know?
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I still want my money." My mother then says...
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- Oh, don't be that way.
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At least she tried something on her own, and why are you so mad?
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You can afford $500 or you wouldn't have given it to her.
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- Now, I'm enraged.
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I blow up at my mom and sister, and I leave the dinner.
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I get even more angry when my father later calls me and tells me that I need to be the bigger person in this situation and let it go because we all know how Jane is.
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Now, I'm livid.
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I can't bring myself to curse my dad out, so I burst into tears and hang up on him.
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Here's my iceberg analysis, and this is hypothetical because I don't have a sister.
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Did I have a right to be angry at Jane for telling me that she blew my money, moved on, and had no intentions of paying me?
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Sure, but that's not really what infuriated me, causing a scene at the family dinner and on the phone with my father.
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So, thinking about the top of the iceberg, the first blowup came from my mother saying that I don't need the money.
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Moving just below the surface, why was that statement so hurtful?
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Because it's a recurring theme, that as the successful child, I don't need much.
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Jane was always needy and failing at something, so she got extra attention and help from my parents.
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So deep down, I feel like my self-sufficiency made it easy for them to let me grow up on autopilot without much support because I didn't need it.
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The second dagger came from my father with his statement that I needed to be the bigger person.
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Again, that triggered a longstanding hurt that I have to be the mature one who lets things go and not show upset.
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So that's the hurt behind that anger.
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What was the unmet need?
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In this specific situation, I needed my parents to empathize with me for being angry at my sister for her inconsiderate behavior.
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I needed them to acknowledge that I had a right to be upset instead of treating me as if I was a bully.
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Now looking even deeper, what's the fear?
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I fear that they, my family, will never let me be imperfect, and if I am, they won't love me.
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I fear the dynamic of me, being the unflawed person without any needs, will never go away, and because of that, I'll never feel close to them.
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And if I really let my mind think about this fear, I may realize and then admit to myself that I actually hate them, and I fear that they'll eventually figure that out.
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Now that conclusion sounds harsh, but the reality is, often, fears that trigger anger have an ugly primitive core to them, and they're primitive thoughts that we don't want to accept on a conscious level.
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Usually, it takes a trained professional to help you recognize some of these unpleasant thoughts, but it's not impossible for you to become self-aware with lots of reflection.
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The positive that can come from uncovering unpleasant thoughts like this is to give you a chance to address the hurt and fear directly instead of only reacting to it.
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So in this case, after pondering how I got here with so much anger about this $500, I conclude that I need to give my family a chance to respond to my feelings of being emotionally neglected over the years and using my success against me.
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Sure, I have an axe to grind with my sister for acting so entitled and insensitive, but it's really my parents who caused the hurt.
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Having a conversation with my parents can help them understand what's really bothering me, it's so much more than money, and give them a chance to make amends.
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Now, yes, there are parents who intentionally harm their children.
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That happens, and it's a terrible thing.
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But there are a lot more parents who are flawed individuals and unintentionally make mistakes that they don't realize have the longstanding effects that they do.
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And I've seen this kind of situation many times, and I've seen a parent confronted about this who had no idea that their child was harboring these feelings.
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The mom says...
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- I was just so thankful that I didn't have to worry about you like I did Jane.
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- But mom doesn't realize that focusing on the special-needs child made the self-sufficient one feel unloved.
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And that dynamic shows up again and again in various situations until it finally gets addressed.
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Another way this iceberg analogy can help is giving you more empathy toward others who blow up all the time or seem easily angered or irritated.
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We all have these icebergs.
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And although it's not okay to attack people because of deeper hurts, understanding that the angry, volatile person may have some unresolved needs may make it easier to overlook their reactions.
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It doesn't mean they should get a pass every time they get angry and lash out, but at least you can avoid engaging with them, because if their reaction is based on some deeper hurt, you're fighting a battle that has little to do with the surface issue that started it.
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I have some other videos on managing anger, and I'll have them linked in the description if you want to see more on anger.
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Thanks for watching. See you next time.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Always Angry? Try This Technique Before The Next Blow Up”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: anger, angry, fear, hurt, Jane. This video has 91 sentences and 1702 words to shadow. The speech runs for 10:07. The speaker talks at a natural 168 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| iceberg noun | /ˈaɪsbɝɡ/ | A huge mass of ocean-floating ice which has broken off a glacier or ice shelf |
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| maladaptive adjective | /ˌmæləˈdæptɪv/ | Of behavior, showing inadequate or counterproductive mental and behavioral adaptation to a new situation. |
| unmeet verb | To undo the process of meeting. | |
| hypothetical adjective | /ˌhaɪpəˈθɛtɪkəl/ | Based upon a hypothesis; conjectural. |
| suppress verb | /səˈpɹɛs/ | To put an end to, especially with force, to crush, do away with; to prohibit, subdue. |
| unpleasant adjective | /ʌnˈplɛzn̩t/ | Not pleasant. |
| primitive noun | /ˈpɹɪmɪtɪv/ | An original or primary word; a word not derived from another, as opposed to derivative. |
| analyze verb | /ˈæn.əˌlaɪz/ | To subject to analysis. |
| aggravate verb | /ˈæɡ.ɹə.veɪ̯t/ | To make (an offence) worse or more severe; to increase in offensiveness or heinousness. |
| autopilot noun | /ˈɔtoʊˌpaɪlət/ | A mechanical, electrical, or hydraulic system used to guide a vehicle without assistance from a human being. |
| empathize verb | /ˈɛmpəˌθaɪz/ | to feel empathy for another person |
| enrage verb | /ɪnˈɹeɪd͡ʒ/ | To become angry or wild. |
| factly adverb | In a manner or tone that accords with a fact-based assertion. | |
| headspace noun | /ˈhɛdspeɪs/ | The space between the top of the contents of a container (such as a jar) and its seal (such as a lid). |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| blow up verb | To explode or be destroyed by explosion. | |
| go away verb | To depart or leave a place. | |
| show up verb | To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically. | |
| work out verb | /ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/ | To calculate. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being paid · are flawed · is based |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who upset · one who lets |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 40 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, didn't, can't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: hypothetical /ˌhaɪpəˈθɛtɪkəl/, empathize /ˈɛmpəˌθaɪz/, pathological /ˌpæθ.əˈlɑd͡ʒ.ɪ.kəl/, empathy /ˈɛmpəθi/, thankful /ˈθæŋkfəl/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, interruption /ˌɪntəˈɹʌpʃən/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/, aggression /əˈɡɹɛʃən/, ambition /æmˈbɪʃ.ən/
- Long words — get the stress right: maladaptive /ˌmæləˈdæptɪv/, hypothetical /ˌhaɪpəˈθɛtɪkəl/, autopilot /ˈɔtoʊˌpaɪlət/, inconsiderate /ˌɪnkənˈsɪdəɹɪt/, insensitive /ɪnˈsɛnsɪtɪv/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like iceberg, emotion, maladaptive.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.